The Humboldt Beacon newspaper — a local institution that has informed the Eel River Valley for more than a century — will cease publication next month, Times-Standard Publisher Dave Kuta announced Monday. The Beacon’s last issue will be Dec. 8.

The Bay Area News Group, publisher of the leading daily newspapers in San Francisco’s suburbs, had some important news to share with its readers in late August. In a 700-word, unbylined article that appeared on its newspapers’ Web sites, it said 11 of its dailies would soon be consolidated into two titles, the Times and the East Bay Tribune. The “rebranding,” as the story put it, “will result in greater emphasis on providing high-impact, regional and local coverage.”

The Booth Newspaper organization in Michigan has issued notices to about 550 of its estimated 1,200 employees that they will be laid off Jan. 2 in the company’s bid to streamline itself for the digital age of journalism.

Bhaskar Sunkara examines the role of objectivity within the mainstream media:

The battle lines couldn’t appear more sharply drawn: Fox News versus “real journalism.” That’s the way former New York Times editor Howell Raines framed the conflict in a Washington Post column last year.

Mark Medici, then-vice president of audience for the Dallas Morning News, triggered a brief media frenzy in October when he said at a conference that within three years the Morning News wouldn’t be publishing seven days a week.